“Bring him along! Bring him along! Splendid! Easy now! the devil! Take him along the side! Get to the side, can’t you? Stop--something’s cracking! What? his coat is being torn! Carry him along!” were the anxious shouts one heard on all sides. Having taken off the Admiral’s coat, they dragged him with the greatest difficulty through the narrow opening of the jammed door out on to the after embrasure, and were just proceeding to fasten him to the raft, when Kolomeytseff did, what a man does only once in his life, and then when inspired. My readers who are landsmen will not realise all the danger of what we were to attempt, but sailors will easily understand the risk. Kolomeytseff brought his vessel alongside and to windward of the mutilated battleship, out of whose battered gun ports stuck her crippled guns, and from whose side projected the broken booms of her torpedo-nets.[27] Dancing up and down on the waves the torpedo-boat at one moment rose till her deck was almost on a level with the embrasure, then rapidly sank away below; next moment she was carried away, and then again was seen struggling towards us, being momentarily in danger of staving in her thin side against one of the many projections from this motionless mass. The Admiral was carried hurriedly from the after to the bow embrasure, along the narrow gangway between the turrets and the battered side of the upper battery. From here, off the backs of the men who were standing by the open half-port, holding on to the side, he was lowered down, almost thrown, on board the torpedo-boat, at a moment when she rose on a wave and swung towards us.[28] “Hurrah! the Admiral is on board!” shouted Kursel, waving his cap. “Hurrah!” cheered every one. How I, with my wounded legs, boarded her, I don’t remember. I can only recollect that, lying on the hot engine-room hatch between the funnels, I gazed at the _Suvoroff_, unable to take my eyes off her. It was one of those moments which are indelibly impressed upon the mind. Our position alongside the _Suvoroff_ was extremely dangerous, as, besides the risk of being crushed, we might, at any moment, have been sunk by a shell, for the Japanese still poured in a hot fire upon both the flag-ship and the _Kamchatka_. Several of the _Buiny’s_ crew had already been killed and wounded with splinters, and a lucky shot might at any moment send us to the bottom. “Push off quickly!” shouted Kursel from the embrasure. “Push off--push off--don’t waste a moment--don’t drown the Admiral!” bawled Bogdanoff, leaning over the side and shaking his fist at our captain. “Push off--push off!” repeated the crew, looking out of the battery ports and waving their caps. Choosing a moment when she was clear of the side, Kolomeytseff gave the order “Full speed astern.”